The Batlord

Well, first of all, Qui Gon Jinn was the only good character in all three of the movies. Everyone else was a two dimensional cardboard cutout. That's not necessarily their fault, since the dialogue could have been written for Days of Our Lives (in content and quality). He was the only character in any of those movies that I actually enjoyed watching on screen, and who therefore gave any of those scenes any semblance of immersion.

Secondly, as poorly made as Phantom Menace was, it still had a recognizable plot that had some semblance of a flow. I honestly have problems recalling what even happened in the other two, because it just seemed to be characters going to do arbitrary things that supposedly advanced the plot, but were just excuses for cheesy CGI effects shots or just poorly executed dialogue scenes meant to get us to the cheesy CGI effects shots.

And lastly (I could probably come up with more, but I'm lazy), Phantom Menace worked as an entertaining children's movie, while the other two movies failed as teenage fluff that remind me of Twilight movie commercials. Phantom Menace may not have been a good Star Wars movie, but I can at least watch it and derive some form of enjoyment out of it.

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Janszoon

Well, I guess we just feel completely opposite about these movies. To me Qui-Gon Jinn was not a particularly memorable character since he was basically a clone of Obi-Wan from the originals. The best characters, imo, were Obi-Wan, the Emperor and Yoda, and one of the most interesting things about the prequels was the way these three evolved and slowly turned who they were in the first trilogy. As far as the plots go, Phantom Menace is the one with the story that I found the least memorable and least relevant—some poorly explained trade dispute that has nothing to do with in anything in the larger story aside from getting the characters all together in one place. The other two were actually key pieces of the larger storyline and much more entertaining movies.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

The Batlord

I don't think any of them did anything to advance any larger storyline. In order to not ruin my love of the original trilogy, I've basically just written the new trilogy off as non-canonical, and ignored them as far as continuity is concerned. So, I'm left with judging them on their individual merits, and...well I've already covered that territory.

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Janszoon

Really? I mean, whether you like the prequels or not, it's pretty hard to say that the creation of the empire, rise of the Emperor, destruction of the Jedi and birth of Darth Vader aren't crucial parts of the story.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

The Batlord

Well, a twelve year old can put up a Star Wars fanfic on the internet about the Clone Wars and the rise of Darth Vader too, but unless it's any good, I'll just write it off and move on. The fact that this just so happened to have been done by George Lucas doesn't really have any relevance to the Star Wars universe in my head.

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duga

I actually think the plot is pretty intricate...it's a shame the script was so poor because the whole thing was pretty clever (and the one thing George did right...if he even though of it).

Nerd moment coming...

Palpatine was the Ambassador for Naboo. Obviously, he was also a Sith lord. Galactic domination isn't easy. His first task was to be elected Supreme Chancellor for the Republic, which wasn't going to be simple since Naboo is pretty much a bum**** planet. Using his dark side powers, he convinced the Trade Federation to create a "trade dispute" with Naboo (which they were really just going to turn into a full blown war regardless). The Republic had no standing army so there was nothing they could do to help. This also made the current Chancellor look bad and created sympathy for Naboo...perfect time for Palpatine to move in and get elected (I'm sure with a little help from the dark side). The Trade Federation loses, they get pissed, and they and many other planets are convinced to join the "Separatist" movement by Darth Sidious (who is obviously Palpatine's apprentice). The reason behind creating this movement was so that Palpatine could convince the Republic that they needed an army. Queue the clones. Now the Army of the Republic is fighting the Separatists...both sides which Palpatine has orchestrated. He designed the war to go on and on until eventually he could pin the whole thing on the Jedi, kill them, and then declare himself Emperor. This is funny, too, because if you remember it was Jar Jar who gave Palpatine emergency powers to declare all this stuff in the first place...so really he's the one who screwed everyone over.

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Confusion will be my epitaph...